Ruben Rosario: A predator's protector must be made to pay, too

It's time to start holding people other than the predator accountable for the rapes and sexual molestation of children.

I'm talking here about those whose instinct is to protect the institution and its reputation rather than protecting children. Examples abound this week and in recent months.

On Tuesday, Oct. 9, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to a 30- to 60-year prison term -- by normal estimates a life stint, considering he's 68 -- for sexually molesting 10 boys over a 15-year period while operating on the side a foundation for underprivileged children.

The sentencing was anticlimactic. I'm more intrigued by the upcoming trial in January 2013 of former Penn State higher-ups -- former athletics director Tim Curley and former senior vice president Gary Schultz -- on perjury charges.

The two, who pleaded not guilty, are accused of lying to a grand jury about their knowledge of a 2001 child-abuse allegation against Sandusky and deliberately failing to report it. Legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who also was told of the incident, died in the midst of the scandal that led to Sandusky's prosecution.

Sandusky's sentencing followed Monday's charges against a former drama teacher and "dorm parent" at elite Shattuck-St. Mary's School in Faribault, Minn.

Advertisement

Lynn Seibel, 70, is facing charges he sexually assaulted at least six former students during his 10-year teaching stint at the school. Again, what's intriguing here is the alleged conduct of school officials in the aftermath of Seibel's resignation in 2003 after not one or two but 14,000 child porn pictures were found on his work computer.

Shattuck-St. Mary's said Monday that "after consultation with the school's attorneys, the school confirmed that the material did not trigger a reporting requirement." As a result, police were never notified.

Perhaps, the school needs to add a criminal justice course to its curriculum. Possession of child pornography is a federal crime. School officials are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. You don't need to be a vice cop to understand that possession of child pornography by a person with access to children or in a position of trust and authority over children is a volatile mix and more than reason enough to open a case.

In a study commissioned by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of 1,713 people arrested for possession of child pornography in a one-year period, 40 percent also molested children, and 15 percent tried to sexually abuse them.

But wait. There's more on the self-preservation of entities in child abuse incidents, both domestic and overseas, for this is a worldwide problem.

According to a report Monday, an estimated 23 percent of Dutch children removed from troubled homes became victims of sexual abuse once they were put in state-funded institutions. A commission that released the report found worrisome the fact that only 2 percent of abuse cases were detected or reported by the state entities.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times disclosed that for at least two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

The newspaper's review of 1,600 internal and previously confidential files found that Boy Scouts officials from 1970 to 1991 frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign -- and helped many cover their tracks.

Men expelled for alleged abuses, the newspaper noted, slipped back into the Boy Scouts program, only to be accused of molesting again.

Seibel is undergoing prosecution in Los Angeles on unrelated child porn charges and will be extradited to Minnesota after that case is resolved, said interim Faribault Police Chief Don Gudmundson.

Gudmundson, who was Dakota County sheriff from 1995 to 2010, said the probe has found evidence that Seibel "had access to children from Rhode Island to Los Angeles" after he left the Faribault school nine years ago.

He questioned the school's handling of Seibel as well as the 2008 suicide of another teacher at the school after he was confronted with allegations of having sexual relations with an underage female international exchange student. Gudmundson said police were not informed of the allegations until after the suicide.

"I think that they had a legal as well as a moral obligation (to report) and get the professionals (police) involved," he said. "They will have to live with the results of the outcomes."

That's why when there's solid evidence of obstruction or criminal enabling, someone else should accompany the molester to the Big House.

It happened this summer in Philadelphia when Monsignor William J. Lynn became the first Roman Catholic Church official in the U.S. to be convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his oversight.

During the trial, prosecutors introduced evidence that Lynn shielded predatory priests, some of whom were transferred to unsuspecting parishes. Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in state prison.

Costly civil litigation should be motivation enough. But perhaps the fear of prison or the clank of a cell door closing might get the powers that be to do the right thing before more children are hurt.